Nintendo GameCube sales on target to beat initial forecast

In the US, that is

Nintendo sold 600,000 GameCubes in the US during the 15 days on and after the game console's launch, it said yesterday in the latest in a long line of sales stats the company has posted.

Microsoft, by contrast, is keeping mum on Xbox sales figures. Xbox went on sale three days before GameCube. The intense rivalry between Micrsoft and Nintendo is the prime reason for the Japanese company's need to keep telling us it's selling consoles.

The third player, Sony, doesn't have to work quite so hard, having already well established the PlayStation 2 as market leader by shipping over more than 20 million units between March 2000 and 30 September this year, 8.6 million of them in the US.

Nintendo originally planned to ship 700,000 consoles in the US by the end of 2001, but raised its target to 1.3 million within days of the GameCube's debut. If it maintains the rate of sale it achieved during the first 15 days, it should meet its target well before 31 December. ®